I just saw a reference to Kornbluth’s story, The Marching Morons, and I’m also working up a talk on the perils of excessive adaptationism, and together they motived me to repost this article from Scienceblogs. It’s always bugged me: it’s saturated with the unthinking assumption that human diversity is hardwired and fixed, and built on a racially invariant biological foundation. And it largely went unquestioned by science fiction fans.

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I was sent a link to this editorial by the science-fiction writer, Ben Bova. I like part of the sentiment, where he’s arguing that it’s worth the effort to try and change the world, but a substantial part of it bugs me.

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Chait is complaining about “political correctness”. Fine, complain away; there are even lines I would draw that partly coincide with the lines he draws. He begins with an anecdote about angry students who littered a conservative columnist’s hallway with defaced copies of a ‘satirical’ column, and threw eggs at his door.

Don’t throw eggs at people’s doors, OK?

There are things you shouldn’t do, like damaging property or sending death threats or harassing people to interfere with their lives in destructive ways. Sometimes people on the left do cross those lines; I’m happy to join Chait in deploring those acts.

But don’t call it “P.C.” That’s a term that raises my hackles straight from the onset: it’s the disparaging phrase used solely against liberals, judging them not by their actions but their purpose. Vandalism and harassment are not ideologically-specific tools, used only by the left; let’s deplore the tactics no matter who employs them, but as soon as you attach the P.C. label, I know right away that you are trying to target liberals only.

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I was a graduate student in Eugene, Oregon, and I liked it. It’s a very liberal town, as is Portland, and we were only vaguely aware that the surrounding areas were extremely conservative. We also knew that there were areas to the south in particular that were flamingly racist and homophobic, and reading David Brin’s novel, The Postman, set in a future Oregon, it was completely unsurprising to have the antagonist be basically a white supremacist from down around the Rogue River. But that wasn’t us!

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Always a good philosophy.

The Oakland Tribune was pitch perfect.

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I think we can use this card around here.

David Duke, the ex(?)-Ku Klux Klan leader and wanna-be politician, leapt to the defense of Steve Scalise, the Republican who has spoken for a white supremacist organization. That’s self-defeating right there — I would hope that the Klan would never speak in my defense — but what he said.

In an interview with Fusion.net explaining his connection to current House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Duke said that he is exceptionally well-connected within the U.S. political class and that charges of racism against him are a product of the media’s “zionist” and “tribalist” mentality.

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Always good to see the police intimidating the dangerous characters.

I guess the UK is rather racist, too…or at least that portion of the country that reads the Daily Mail. There is some idle speculation that maybe someday in some distant future some Sony executive might like to explore the idea of hiring Idris Elba to play the role of James Bond — it’s really even more tentative than that implies, because Daniel Craig is apparently under contract to do a few more — and look at how Daily Mail readers reacted to that hint of a possibility.

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